CONSUMER REPORTS7 on Your Side: Consumer Reports ranks best stick vacuums Stick vacuums have a lot of variety and Consumer Reports narrows down which ones are the best for their value. Stick vacuums now come in all shapes and sizes. Some are slender, light weight pick-me-ups, while others are beefier with larger heads and motors.RELATED: Consumer Reports warns of Obamacare scam Whatever you buy, you want one that gets the job done. Consumer reports found out which clean up the best.Stick vacs are handy for light picking up at the end of the day or a quick sweep around the house when a company is dropping by.But consumer reports found some don't do a good job. The Electrolux Ergorapido just pushed around a test mixture of cheerios, rice and sand. It costs $220.The Electrolux is also among the worst on the edge test, leaving behind a swath of sand after two passes.The Dyson V6 absolute showed how it's done, picking up all the sand along the edge.

"The Dyson V6 lightweight, weighing just five pounds, but it has a hefty price tag: $600," said Dan Diclerico of Consumer Reports. "It was excellent at surface cleaning a carpet and picked up embedded pet hair easily."The rechargable battery runs for about 14 minutes.Another recommended vaccuum, the $230 Shark Rocket Deluxepro Truepet has a cord so you don't have to worry about running out of power. It weighs about nine pounds and does an excellent job picking up pet hair.A light on the Shark's deck illuminates dirt in dark, hard to reach spots, like under furniture.For far less, the $130 Bissell Trilogy Superlight also does a great job sucking up pet hair and is quieter than a lot of the machines Consumer Reports tested. On bare floors, the Trilogy is even better at picking up little bits of debris. RELATED: New systems could help those without credit raise their scoresSo some of these new stick vacs can be a big help around the house, but they still don't approach the deep cleaning power of a regular vacuum.

So don't consider them a replacement.Consumer Reports is published by Consumers Union. Both Consumer Reports and Consumers Union are not-for-profit organizations that accept no advertising. Neither has any commercial relationship with any advertiser or sponsor on this site. (All Consumer Reports Material Copyright 2014. Consumers Union of U.S. Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)Here's the Latest Dirt on iRobot and Its Roomba Since hitting a recent high of $41.79 on July 1, shares of iRobot (IRBT) stock have lost more than one-quarter of their value, falling to around $30 in recent trading. But why are the wheels coming off the Roomba maker? You can sum up the answer in just one word: Dyson. IRobot makes machines for all sorts of customers -- including the Looj for gutters, the Mirra pool scrubber, the U.S. military's Packbot IED-disarming robot (ubiquitous in Iraq and Afghanistan) and the Seaglider robotic submarine. But most consumers associate it with just the Roomba. And for good reason.

According to data from S&P Capital IQ, when viewed from a financial perspective, iRobot basically is Roomba.what is the cost of a dryer vent cleaning Last year, iRobot's Home Robots division (of which Roomba is the largest part) accounted for nearly 88 percent of iRobot revenues. cleaning the fan on a hp laptopThe company sold nearly $428 million worth of vacuum cleaners -- vs. only about $50 million worth of robots for defense and security. best way to clean oak trimSo it's not overstating to say that the company lives and dies by the success of the Roomba.What's Bad News for iRobot ...vacuum cleaner best for allergies

From one perspective, that's very bad news for iRobot. best leather cleaning and conditioning productsBecause as one recent review details, the competition among floor-cleaning automatons is heating up.best buy upholstery steam cleaner Consumer Reports -- the go-to source for unbiased product reviews -- has yet to publish a comprehensive review of robotic vacuums. published ratings for 10 floor-cleaning robots, including P3 International's V-Bot ($107), the Neato XV-21 ($429) and iRobot's Roomba 650 ($399.99). The best of the bunch was the XV Signature Pro ($399.99), manufactured by privately held Neato. According to TTR, while Roomba beat out the competition on performance, it lagged Neato on the design of its model and the features. And now the Roomba faces a challenge from Dyson, which is usually rated really good, but really pricey in consumer surveys.

(Bargain seekers are urged to buy Hoover or Miele, which was rated one of Consumer Reports' five recommended bagless vacuum models in the magazine's already-out November issue.) Dyson says it's sunk 16 years of research into a plan to displace Roomba as the go-to choice for a robotic vacuum.... Could Be Good News for You Granted, Roomba has upped its game in the six months since the TTR report came out. As it turns out, the Roomba 650 that TTR rated a runner-up to Neato is now two design cycles behind Roomba's top-of-the-line product, the Roomba 880 "for pets and allergies." IRobot releases its Roombas in upgrade cycles denoted by series, e.g., the 600 series that TTR reviewed, the 700 series that followed and the new 800 series -- boasting a more powerful vacuum and no brushes to get tangled up with long pet hair. Dyson won't introduce the 360 Eye until early next year, and then only in Japan, with other markets later in 2015. Most important for consumers, though, is the likelihood that increased competition -- from Dyson at the high end and from various lower-end rivals -- will prompt iRobot to improve its robo-vacs and maybe even curtail the skyrocketing prices.

Roomba: Between a Rock and a High Price Sure, the $1,200-plus price tag that Dyson reportedly plans to hang on its 360 Eye may not pressure iRobot to reduce prices much. But the introduction of a "cyclonic action" robo-vac could challenge the Roomba maker to add battery life and suction power to its highest-end Roombas. At the same time, the abundant options among lower-priced robo-vacs could prevent iRobot from raising prices as it improves its products. After all, according to TTR, there's only about a 19 percent gap in quality between the Roomba 650, rated 9.5 on a 10-point scale, and a P3 V-Bot, rated 7.68. But the V-Bot costs only $107. That's 73 percent less than a Roomba 650 -- and 85 percent less than Roomba's 880 model and 91 percent discount to the predicted cost of a Dyson 360 Eye). Theoretically, you could buy two V-Bots, get 15.36 points' worth of "quality" -- and save $186 on the cost of a Roomba 360. Motley Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position in any stocks mentioned, but The Motley Fool recommends iRobot.

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